Abstract
Because it is a staple food, sustainable production of wheat is crucial for global food security. Arid and semi-arid regions are worst affected by climate change, which has resulted in poor productivity of different crops, including wheat. To this end, this study aimed to investigate the effect of foliage-applied thiourea on the growth, yield, and nutritional-quality-related traits of bread wheat. The treatments consisted of thiourea levels (control, 500, and 1000 mg L−1) factorally combined with two diverse wheat cultivars (Gandam-1 and Galaxy-2013) at different growth stages (tillering, booting, and heading) and was repeated over two years. The analysis of the data shows that thiourea treatments and the cultivars significantly (p ≤ 0.05) affected the growth, nutritional quality traits, and morphological traits, and the interaction of the two factors was also significant. Improvement in productivity and nutritional quality was observed from the application of thiourea in both cultivars. Galaxy-2013 performed best at 1000 mg L−1 thiourea application for both productivity- and nutritional-quality-related traits at the heading stage. In conclusion, exogenous application of thiourea improves the productivity and nutritional quality of wheat on sandy loam soils in semi-arid regions; however, for wider recommendations, more trials may be conducted across various agro-ecological regions.
Highlights
When considering agricultural policies, the main focus is on wheat, as it is a very crucial crop and is the main crop of Pakistan
Improvement in crop allometric traits such as leaf area index and morphological traits with thiourea application might be due to better translocation of photosynthates and an increase in the ability of plants to withstand abiotic stress, heat stress that is common at the maturity stage of wheat crop [43,44,45]
These results are supported by previous findings of Sanaullah et al [47], who reported a significant increase in grain weight with thiourea application, which might be due to better photosynthesis and translocation of starch towards the developing kernel
Summary
The main focus is on wheat, as it is a very crucial crop and is the main crop of Pakistan. The contribution of wheat to GDP is 1.7%, and its contribution to value added in agriculture is 8.7%. During the years 2019–2020, the area under cultivation of wheat was 8825 thousand hectares. The average yield of wheat was 2827 kg ha−1 , while overall production was 24,946 thousand tons. Wheat is the prime source of calories and the largest protein source [1].
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